Beginners' Welcome
You thought you were dead for sure wandering aimlessly around this cursed desert for weeks. At last you had come across a town ... Well, it was more of a few tents hobbled together, housing other half-dead humans on the brink of survival like yourself, but to you it was to become your town, your fortress. = Introduction = Welcome to the world of Die2Nite, a game of surviving the zombie apocalypse for as long as you can. This article aims at explaining some basic helpful hints for how to maximize your enjoyment in the world, before you are torn to shreds by the claws of hungry dead. It is expected that you read the Player Guide first. Read the Forums This is, by far, the most important aspect of gameplay in Die2Nite. A town where people are disorganized and do not communicate will fail quickly. The forums are the backbone of idea and thought flow. A basic rule is to read all the forums in town before deciding on what to do. A few good guidelines for communicating on the forums Be Polite Nothing will turn the entire town's opinion against you faster than being a bully or eThug, and without their confidence in you, no one will listen even if you are a veteran of the game. If you want to bring a point across, offer it as a suggestion and your reasons. Don't threaten with banishments, call people noobs, etc. This only will make people less inclined to work with you. Don't Feed the Trolls If you see someone in the forums being rude, calling other citizens names, or generally making a nuisence of themselves, try and ignore them. If they're constantly causing problems, just shun them. That way their trolling ways don't spill over and effect the survival of the town. Listen to People who know Some people will know more than you about the game. Be humble and open minded and learn the game. Some people might be very abrasive when communicating this, but try to learn and help that person. By being polite and calm in response, the other person might settle down himself. Don't Spam Nobody likes spammers Keep it on topic There are a few specialized town forums such as the Bank Forum, and the Construction Sites forum. Don't use these forums for anything but discussions about these particular activities. Action Points are Life You have 6 AP to start. These are the droplets of life that will sustain your town. Treat each one as a precious jewel. Spend every AP before eating/drinking Drinking water or eating food will restore 6 AP to a maximum of 6. That means, if you have 1 AP and drink a ration of water, you will only receive 5 AP. 1 AP was just wasted. If you can, you should spend every single AP before restoring them. Watch what you eat Not all foods are equal. Steak will give you 7 AP. Uncooked Meaty Bones will refill your AP, but they count as "cannibalism" and may cause you to become infected. Drugs are a Last Stand If you take drugs more than once a day, you will get addicted. Some drugs can get you addicted even if it's your first dose for the day. An addicted citizen will soon die when the town can't find drugs anymore. Use drugs when you are in a life-or-death situation. Examples include the town needs a few more AP spent on a defensive project, but everyone is tapped out on AP, you are trapped in the desert, etc. Let infected do drugs Infected people are already at risk of dying, and should be the ones sacrificing themselves by popping drugs and spending AP on construction when desperately needed. If you have no infected, the next choice would be a wounded citizen. Do we need Building or Scavenging? A crucial point every day would be to determine if the town needs to spend AP on building stuff, or finding stuff. If the town is in dire need of a building that will greatly help the town, and you go out there without helping build, then you have killed your town by spending AP where it wasn't needed. In Town Upgrade your Home to a Tent. As of season three it's generally recommended that all citizens upgrade their home to a tent on the first day. Furthermore, with the addition of the "Lazy Zombie Effect" to the game, personal defense has become more important for late day towns and it's recommended that prior to breaches that all surviving players upgrade their homes defense as much as possible. Put "Defense" Items in the Bank Items that are categorized as "Defense" help the town during the night. Don't keep them in your inventory or in your house; put them in the bank. A Defensive item in your house adds only half its value to the town defense. A defensive item in your rucksack has no value (except the Car Door when scavenging, and certain items as Watchman weapons). Note that it is better for the individual for the town to have better defense - it lets less zombies in and reduces the chance of you being eaten or Terrified. Watchtower vs Workshop This is an extremely contentious question. Some people advocate the watchtower for it giving you the ability to estimate attack sizes and thus know roughly how much you have to focus on defense. Also, it's the cheapest project that can be voted on for the resource and AP free upgrade per night. However, the workshop allows you to convert inferior resources into usable resources. Given how fast you'll pile up otherwise useless rotten logs and scrap iron that can be turned into twisted planks and wrought iron, this vastly increases the wealth of the town, which can then be used to build things like the watchtower. The economics are clear. If people aren't cooperating enough to spend the AP to convert resources in the workshop, odds are they aren't cooperating enough for the town to live anyway. So the only time you should build a watchtower first is if it's ( a ) near the end of the day ( b ) there's no chance to complete the workshop and ( c ) you have at least 1/2 or 2/3 of the resources needed for the workshop after building the watchtower and ( d ) people are committed to really cooperating on day 2 in order to make sure the workshop gets built. A good strategy to keep unnecessary watchtower builds from happening is for workshop supporting people to hold the resources so that the watchtower cannot be started. This requires trust, but it's a good way to demonstrate trust is merited early and should help foster a spirit of teamwork among the people who can plan and thus understand the importance of the workshop. Estimate the Attack Before Building or Going Out A good idea is to have everyone in the town estimate the attack, but don't spend APs yet, then come back when you have a decent estimate on the next night's attack. Now that you know how much more defense to build, you can decide whether you need to build more defenses or if you have time to go do some general scavenging or exploring. Don't build for building's sake If you got AP to spend and view the construction sites and see that there are things ready to build. Resist the temptation to build! Often, multiple installations will share common materials, and you might be building something the town does not need at the moment, therefore wasting AP. The World Beyond Don't wander aimlessly Expand slowly from town and don't go running off. The farther out you go, the more AP you have to spend to move, and the more AP people will have to spend to rescue you. Use the Map Markers There are map markers to be placed when you are in a zone, located under the map when scavenging. It is important to mark things such as zombie counts, important items, and depleted zones! The last is the most often overlooked but wastes your scavengers time and valuable APs when they spend them travelling to a zone to search only to find it depleted. It is easy to do and costs the individual no resources to tag the site. Autosearch If you have spent the AP to walk somewhere, stay there for a while and let the auto search do its magic. Log off, then log back in later to see if you found something, this makes the AP you spent more worthwhile. Worth noting though is the fact that autosearching depleted areas yields very few resources, none of which can be used without the workshop. So autosearching in high traffic areas is usually not a good idea. The best places to autosearch are 3+ AP's from town. On the first day, its generally best to autosearch at the farthest possible place from the town, as it will generally become overrun with zombies later on. Note that the searchtower randomly undepletes zones once it is built. Search from Far to Near Although it is tempting to push that search button as you travel out further, don't! The best practice is to autosearch as far away from town as is safe, then work your way inward. In this fashion, when you run out of room and drop less valuable items on the ground, you are carrying items CLOSER to town rather than FURTHER AWAY. Alternatively, do push that search button as you travel further out. After all, it's free! But until you get to the furthest away square that you'll be travelling to, drop anything you find. Then you can stop and autosearch, and either take a different path back in to town, searching along the way, or retrace your path while optimizing your rucksack for the most valuable of the items you have found. If you also are updating a map utility such as From Dusk to Dawn your townmates can pick up items you've found with those free searches, leaving you free to take a different path back to town so that you can search more squares in total. Dealing with Zombies ﻿ Never Flee from Zombies If you walk around the desert and find yourself in a zone where all you can do is flee, DON'T. Fleeing has a 100% chance of getting you wounded and/or infected . Instead make a post on the forums and flag it "This is a message of distress" by checking the appropriate check box under the post. Then keep looking on the forums off and on to see if someone will come rescue you. As a last resort, you could attempt to flee. Note that if you are within a chess knight's move from town, a hero can use their 'Heroic Rescue' power to bring you to town (if they have not used a heroic action that day). Avoid Hand-to-Hand Combat When trapped by zombies, do not fight them in hand-to-hand combat. This uses up AP very fast, but cannot cause injuries. If you have a weapon with you, you can use the weapon to attack without using AP. Even so, weapons can run out of ammunition or break, so combat should only be used sparingly. Rescue Trapped Citizens Even if someone did a dumb or dangerous excursion, it is generally worth rescuing trapped citizens from the desert. Punishing someone for doing something stupid resolves nothing. The person that is rescued will be in gratitude to you and probably listen to you on the forums following this, people that were rude at first and got themselves in a pickle could have their whole attitude changed from being rescued. In the end, you get another body home to town for the zombie attack, and whatever he could carry with him. Of course, if your town needs to finish some defensive project or get eaten alive, the person in the desert is probably doomed. Don't Attack Isolated Zombies Isolated zombies, a zone with a domination score of 2 or less, are not worth attacking. Any citizen can move freely though these squares and fighting zombies only wastes AP and ammunition or risks weapons breakage. Zombies Die of Despair A little known fact of zombie-clearing is that for every 2 zombies killed in a square, a third dies that night from 'despair'. When zombie clearing on an expidition, make sure to take this into account to save APs and weapons rather than using them to kill zombies that would die that night anyway. Avoid Zombies While Terrorized If you're terrorized you exert no control points, so a single zombie will stop you in your tracks. You're better off staying in town and helping with construction sites. You can cure the Terrorized status with Valium, Matches combined with an Open Pack of Cigarrettes, or a Vibrator (with Battery!). Zombies Have a Respawn Limit This is more of a tip for an entire town. There is a minimum amount of zombies required to be on the map (anyone know the exact amount?). If brought below this limit, after the night's attack the game respawns them on the map randomly. Thus, if well-coordinated, a town should 'corral' zombies into 'breeding zones' - killing zombies outside the zone but leaving the ones inside untouched. in this fashion a good portion of the map can be made zombie-free indefinitely. Help! I'm Injured You cannot cure addiction You ate a drug and now you're addicted . You have to eat one drug every day or die at 23:00. Don't go to bed thirsty If you are thirsty and not refreshed , you have a chance of becoming dehydrated at 23:00. Dehydrated means you have a chance of dying at 23:00. If you are thirsty and refreshed, you will not become dehydrated at 23:00. Never use Bandages to heal a wound if you are infected If you are infected , you have a 50% chance of dying every night. Do not waste a bandage on a wound until you are cured of infection. Never use Paracetoid to cure infection if you are wounded If you are wounded , you have a big chance to become infected again. Do not waste Paracetoid to cure your infection until you have bandaged your wound. Cure infection and heal wounds simultaneously If you are wounded and infected , make sure you have bandage and Paracetoid before you attempt to cure and bandage yourself. Category:Expeditions for efficiency Category:Guides